The process is called terraforming. By todays technological standards this is a duanting task.

Restoring an O-Zone layer would be important because the surface of this planet is bobarded by high frequency radiation. Then we can thicken the
atmosphere up, and start producing oxygen and nitrogen. We create an artifical "greenhouse effect", which warms up the climate. This melts the
icecaps and provides water. And the rest is to your imagination.

This would be extremly hard and would require hundreds if not thousands of years to accomplish.

Yep, if you want to do it with existing technologie/technologie that will exist within the next 2o ors so years Goldeagle is correct, however, if you
wanted to do it relatively quickly, you could make a machine that changes things at a quantum scale, which would be an extremely difficult task just
to make the machine.

The other route, would to be to change the genetics of a person, so that they could survive there, of course minor terraforming would have to be done
still.

I'm afraid that wouldn't do it. The atmosphere of the Earth is pretty much kept in place with the magnetic field. Mars has little atmosphere because
it has a very weak magnetic field. Even if we tried to terraform the planet the atmosphere created would just bleed off into space.

First we would have to create a magnetic field around the entire planet.

I really don't see that happening in my lifetime. Or my next 100 lifetimes either.

I figured I put that in the subject line to draw attention. Okay actually this is a good post. Here is what I can see as reasonable and it might work.
We have to drill 4-5 thousand feet underground and start a sub city. We have the tunnel makers as well as all the technologies to create power, air,
and satelite TV! I know there will be some skeptic will come along and say "THERE IS NO WAY POSSIBLE THIS WOULD WORK!", I say it could and we need
to start now. If Mars have just a pinch of atmospere then we can pull the elements out of the atmosphere to complete the puzzle "Air". Water can be
shipped in massive tankers and dumped in man made underground storage facilities. Food and other items can be grown in underground farms using
artificial sunlight. The city itself can be lit by artificial sunlight until the planet is suitable for life. Terraforming a planet takes hundreds,
even thousands of years but until it is suitable for life, we can live underground in dome structures. The reason I say underground because we need to
be able to survive global killers, etc..

Using this concept, there is no reason why we could not live on any planet in our system. By living underground we will focus on advance technologies
to sustain life, only then will we respect the laws of the universe.

One of the first things need to terraform mars is to increase its surface atmospheric pressure and warming it up. Several ideas can be used to do
this such as sending comets break up in the atmosphere. Digging pits into the mantel and harness geothermal energy. A lot also depends on if there
are underground aquifers of water on mars. A huge mirror to increase the energy from the sun that hits mars would work to. All are feasable with
current technology, it is jsut they would take some time and $ to actaully do.

Getting a space elevator up and running would help too.

I suggest readin the "Red Mars" series by Kim Stanley Robinson for ides on terraforming mars

All these ideas are great but why live on the surface and try to create technologies impossible to create, all these gadgets are on Star Trek, and all
the other SCI-FI shows. We have to consider what we can do now, not 500 years in the future. Space elevators, giant mirrors, and atmosphere pulse
gadgets are simply SCI-FI.

The key to our survival is underground, if a global killer was to strike today, how many will survive? I said live underground and some short spand
reply was "You couldn't live on a GAS GIANT like that." Who and the heck said anything about a GAS Giant? People if this is the best we have...
then I am going to buy a lounge chair, sit on the beach with a glass of Brandy and enjoy the view when a global killer hits. Some of the world's
intelligent people can't open a can of beans.

1. Build giant Nuke powered ion thrusters and attach them to large 1-5 mile wide iron astrods and move them into geo orbit around mars set up a
orbital smeliting plant that goes from rock to rock and smelts the iron into steel using the power from the ion thrusters nuke reactors. So given a
few years you have converted iron rocks into big lumps of steel. Now rap them with large steel cables that you make from the rocks them selfs and make
them into giant electro magnets. Use the nukes to power the electro magnets to make a 500 mile wide magnetic sheild for each shielding moon. need
10-32 of these to provide enough sheilding to help. Also it would build up the atmosper by diverting solo winds directly into mars as apost to it
skiming by on the side wisking air away. "solor winds can be blocked by magnetic fields because they are ionsed"

2. use the iron thrusters agine attach to comits and crash them into mars. This does 2 things 1 it brings water to mars and 2 it releases large
amounts of air/mosture/heat that would help build up the air supply this could be enhanced by droping them on the poles of mars to trigger the relase
of water that is or might be already there. "The ion thrusters would detach from the comits before impact and move onto another comit."

3. once you build up a thicken up the air on mars then you can seed mars with large amounts of o2 making microbs once you get the ambent temp above
freezing.

4. You could also place large solar reflectors on the sheilding moons to direct more sunlight onto mars to help with the warming of it.

all this is posible now it would just take time to make the iron astrods into usable electro magnets and getting them and the comits on station.

Using this concept, there is no reason why we could not live on any planet in our system.

And are solar system does have gas giants.

You know I usually dont slam people but ... you know nevermind. Enjoy talking about plasma rays, ion thrusters, and moving planets. I hope it rains
soon to soften that box you are living in... hopefully you can break out of the BOX and see how SCI-FI ideas will get you nowhere except a deal in
Hollywood.
A little hint: We are doomed race living on a small planet with no exit strategy, I don't think there is enough time to build SCI-FI toys.

who said moving planets with ion thrusters I said astroids IE BIG ROCKS... And we are not talking about little piddly ion trusters used for
satilites....... we are talking about 5 ion drives the size of the first stage of satern 5 rocket booster.......

I agree with balqmyst's sense of urgency and the necessity of doing something. I disagree that actual colonies on planets are the best
answer. I believe strongly for a host of reasons that orbiting platforms/cities/habitats are the future homes of humanity, rather than spending time,
energy and resources trying to force round peg environments into our biological square holes, we will explore, exploit and research planets -- but
make no attempt to live there in astounding numbers (like Antartica today).

Since that wasn't the question posed by the thread though let me point to an excellent book that disagrees with me and literally makes the case
The Case for Mars by Robert Zubin says that for $20-30 billion (USD) today we can:

Then the crew will live off the land, growing greenhouse crops, tapping subsurface groundwater, manufacturing useful materials, constructing
plastic domes and brick structures the size of shopping malls. Geothermal power would be tapped from hot regions near once-active volcanoes. Zubrin,
senior engineer at Martin Marietta, and Wagner, a former editor of Ad Astra, weaken their case by arguing that a nascent human civilization on Mars
will revive Earth's frontier spirit and American democracy, saving Western civilization from technological stagnation. Nevertheless, their detailed
blueprint makes a fast-track mission to Mars with an estimated price tag of $20-$30 billion seem remarkably doable.

Not to be the off-the-rocker guy, but you'd be surprised how much a few mini-nukes could do for us. Place em at strategic places, like ice caps, and
they'll release a lot of heat and water into the air with a minimal impact. Quality stuff.

Enjoy talking about plasma rays, ion thrusters, and moving planets. I hope it rains soon to soften that box you are living in... hopefully you can
break out of the BOX and see how SCI-FI ideas will get you nowhere except a deal in Hollywood.

Right...

I was only pointing out an error, I agree with you that we need to colonise other planets, and building sub-terranian facilities is a very good idea.

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